


Blaze

by spiffymittens



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Acting, Catholicism, David Rose is a Good Person, David Rose is a Nice Person, F/M, Friendship, High David Rose, High Patrick Brewer, M/M, Marijuana, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Past Stevie Budd/David Rose, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Throuple, Quiet Sex, Recreational Drug Use, Religion, Stoned Sex, sort of throupley if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:55:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24518029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiffymittens/pseuds/spiffymittens
Summary: Stevie yawns, closes her eyes and leans against Patrick, and all David can feel is sheer, stupid happiness, thinking about how much he loves them, how much they love each other.After aCabaretperformance, David, Patrick and Stevie smoke up and David has a lot of feelings about Catholicism, acting, and the people he loves most.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Stevie Budd & David Rose, Stevie Budd & Patrick Brewer, Stevie Budd/David Rose
Comments: 73
Kudos: 236
Collections: Sexy Cabaret Feelings





	Blaze

**Author's Note:**

> Endless thanks to [reginahalliwell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reginahalliwell/pseuds/reginahalliwell) and [the_hodag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_hodag), betas extraordinaire!

“There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned.” —Mark Antony, _Antony and Cleopatra_

* * *

When David was eight, his mother starred as Cleopatra in a summer Shakespeare festival in Pasadena. They were living in LA, _Sunrise Bay_ was done shooting for the season, and her agent said the stage role would give her more gravitas.

David didn’t know what gravitas meant, but he thought maybe it was the cure for demonic possession.

The idea of being in a play had fascinated him, so he begged his mom, begged Adelina, until they let him spend that whole summer watching the practices and performances. They’d paid a kindly old usher named Lucy to keep an eye on him, and she was good company, but it was hardly necessary: David was determined to be on his best behavior.

He had been permitted to watch his mother like this a few times on _Sunrise Bay_ and he’d loved the way she kindled and sparked when the director said _Action_. He wanted to see if it was the same when she did a play.

It was better. There were no endless retakes with the crew standing around and pursing their mouths at footage; instead it was all energy and urgency and _the show must go on_. 

He’d been enthralled by the scrambling crew in their stage blacks, the swirling silk and leather and lamé costumes and quick changes, the way his mother whirred to life when the curtain rose as if someone had dropped a coin in her. The way she looked when she was _interested_. Sometimes she would look at David like that too, as if he were in the audience, when he helped out backstage. 

And he’d loved, too, the way the cast and crew had petted on him, slipped him extra pastries from the craft cart, let him prompt their lines before they were off-book. David was a very good reader. He thought he might be an actor when he grew up, so he watched the other actors carefully, and slowly he came to understand that different people reacted differently to being on stage.

Some were like his mother, who seemed to absorb something vital from the audience, some galvanizing force that sparked behind her eyes for hours after each performance until she took a few benzos and passed out.

David thinks about that summer a lot these days, a week into _Cabaret’s_ run. He steps backstage just as his fiancé— _fiancé!_ —bustles into view, some of the Emcee’s frenetic energy clinging to him as he helps tidy up after the third showing.

Patrick is a little like Moira Rose, David thinks, and not just because he’s a lapsed Catholic. Patrick enjoys acting, feeds off the audience’s energy, throws himself into it like everything else he does, but unlike David’s mother, he comes down quickly afterwards. He’s like someone who’s good at sex but isn’t in love, and when the show is over, he’s ready to grab his shoes and head for the door. After cleaning up, of course.

Patrick’s tired, handsome face melts into a smile when he sees David, and David’s breath catches a little. Patrick has looked at him with love since before he even said the words, but since the proposal, it’s like he’s opening the shutters wider, letting David see more. Letting himself believe that David won’t run away like some feral thing. 

Being loved like that, being _seen_ like that, would have been unbearable even a few years ago. It’s still a little terrifying but he’s learning to bask in it.

His mother had once told him that acting is just standing up naked and turning around very slowly, which had horrified him at the time. Still does, frankly. But love must be something like that, and he’s learning to hold still these days and let Patrick look. 

Patrick jogs up to David and greets him with a casual kiss, and even after two years David still wants to round up everyone in the building and tell them, “Did you see that? Did you see him kiss me? _Patrick Brewer_ wants to kiss me!” Instead he caresses Patrick’s bicep and says, “Hey sweetheart, ready to go?”

“I’m gonna have to be here for a little longer,” Patrick says, shifting his armload of props. “But hey, can you do me a favor and drive Stevie home? She looks pretty wiped out, and I can just swing by and pick you up on my way home.” 

Patrick has washed most of the makeup off, but he’s missed a bit of the eyeliner. The eyeliner makes David want to lick Patrick’s face, but knowing Patrick wants to take care of Stevie makes David want to lick his cock.

“Sure, no problem. Just . . . hurry up, okay?” David says with a playful leer. “I have plans for you and that eyeliner.” Patrick winks at him and then he’s gone, caroming around the corner to another task.

David wants to feel guilty about not waiting for Patrick, but he’s been dying for a little time with Stevie. Normally that means judging people and eating junk food in the motel lobby, but he’ll take what he can get, even if it’s just a few minutes in the car. And—and maybe, maybe she’ll let him talk a little bit about getting engaged. Between Alexis moping over Ted and his mother running a play and mourning her movie, he hasn’t had much chance to hash it out.

And oh, god, he really, _really_ wants to. He wants to talk about venues and invitations and last names and, more than anything, his astonishment that Patrick asked in the first place. And Stevie doesn’t care about invitations, he knows, but she cares about him, and maybe that’s enough. David hopes it’s enough, because he always wants to tell her things. Telling Stevie something is like admitting it to his own heart. 

That’s why he’d had to— _had to_ —tell her about the proposal first. And she’d cried and hugged him and driven all the way to Elmdale to get him the perfect engagement present, _god_ , those _towels_. 

So of course Stevie’s happy for him, but David worries that wedding talk will be salt in the wound, because he knows she’s still hurting over Emir. Not Emir himself, because that douche was a 4 on a good day, but like . . . the concept of Emir. So he won’t talk about wedding stuff if she doesn’t want to, but he still wants to find out.

He finds Stevie in the dressing room, dreamily sweeping up boa feathers. Like Patrick, she’s already changed back into her street clothes. Her eyes are at half-mast and her long, dark hair is wavy from being pinned up all evening under the wig. She reminds David of someone just then, but he can’t think who. 

“Well, _hello_ , Miss Bowles,” he says, steering her to sit at a makeup station. “You were fabulous tonight, as always.”

David knows how exhausted she is by the way she doesn’t bristle at the compliment or protest, even a little bit, when he plucks the broom from her hands and starts sweeping briskly.

“Thanks,” she says, slumping over the table and pillowing her head on her arms. 

Part of it, he knows, is that Stevie just isn’t as athletic as Patrick, and no matter how many months they rehearsed, performing always takes more out of her.

But David knows Stevie, and he knows actors, so he knows that stepping into Sally Bowles’ T-strap heels wrings her out for the same reason she’s amazing in that role: because she means it.

His mother had humble-bragged about inspiring Stevie’s opening-night performance, told David how she encouraged Stevie to channel her longing to escape “the drudgery of her workaday life”, and David had wanted to burn her fucking wigs for that, but goddamn if it hadn’t worked. Stevie had owned that stage, the rosy peignoir and peach satin chemise making her creamy skin glow as she stepped up to the mic and unzipped her heart like a jacket.

But that kind of public vivisection takes a toll on someone like Stevie. He imagines the spotlights going right through her like an x-ray, but instead of her bones, all it shows is her doubt and loneliness.

David doesn’t want her to be lonely. He wants her to know she matters, that he chooses her, sometimes even over Patrick. So David sweeps for her, and picks up her bag for her, and guides her out to her car, playfully snagging the keys from her and chatting the whole time enough for both of them.

And maybe Stevie’s just frazzled from the show, but David thinks she wants to choose him too, because once she buckles up, she pulls an Altoids box out of her bag and waves it enticingly. “Wanna come in and smoke up?”

“Mmm, tempting,” he says, stretching his hands across the steering wheel. “But I have to open the store in the morning, so how about _you_ come back to _our_ place and smoke up, then you can crash on the couch?” 

And even though he’s supposed to be focusing on Stevie, a tiny part of David wants to curl his hands around his mouth so everyone can see his rings and yell “ _Our place!_ ” so everyone in the world can hear him, because Patrick had _asked_ him and he never intended to stay another night in the motel again. Fuck, he needs to get a handle on himself, because sincerity is blood in the water to Stevie. 

She’s looking at him like she knows exactly what’s going through his head, but lets it go. “Well, how can a girl refuse an offer like that?” she says with a sardonic quirk of her lips. 

And David gets it, because he’s felt that expression on his own face a thousand times. He knows what it’s like to want to go to ground, but not alone. 

So he texts Patrick the new plan and drives back to the apartment, but he doesn’t want all his sweaters to smell like pot so he steers them to the bench outside the front door. 

“What, you want to do this out here?” she asks.

“I mean, it’s such a nice night,” David says, and it is, but—

“And also you don’t want all your sweaters to smell like weed,” Stevie supplies, grinning.

“And also that, yes,” David says, relieved that she gets it, that she knows him. “I’m a professional, and smelling like Mr. Hockley’s tea isn’t the best look for me.” He sits down primly and points at the sign next to the bench. “Besides, this is the smoking area.”

“Welp. Can’t argue with that,” she says, dropping down beside him as she reaches into her bag.

They do argue, though, because it’s what they do. 

It’s a while later—minutes? millennia?—and David feels wonderfully airy, tethered to the earth by Stevie’s head on his shoulder.

“I’m just saying, a hot dog is not a taco, and you need to just admit you’re wrong so we can move on with our lives,” he says as she takes a drag.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Stevie says, passing the joint back over. “Taco shells are basically hot dog buns, and you put filling in them. I’ll be happy to accept your apology at this time.”

“There will be no apology from me, now or ever, because you’re still wrong,” says David, pausing for dramatic effect to take a hit, but he breaks, shaking with silent giggles as he stutters out a plume of smoke. She elbows him in the side and turns her face into his arm, laughing.

Her hair smells like the Rose Apothecary sage mint shampoo and David wants to clap a jar over this moment and keep it forever.

They’re quiet for a while, trading the joint back and forth, and David’s mind homes back in on the thought he’s had tucked away all evening. He wants so badly to talk to her about the engagement, but he’s still not sure if it’s okay after hearing her sing so wistfully about love not hurrying away. He can be cool. He’ll figure out some delicate way to work it into the conversation.

“I want to talk about being engaged, but I’m not sure if you want to talk about it,” are the words that fall out of his stupid, stupid mouth like a chewed-up wad of food instead, _fuck_.

She sits back up, tilts her head back against the bench and he can see the ghost of a smile. “Well that was a smooth segue.” The long line of her neck makes him sort of ache.

“No one has ever accused me of being smooth. Especially since I lack the budget for waxing in my impoverished state. So.” David takes the joint again and inhales, keen to hide his awkwardness.

“Yeah, but that was especially not-smooth, even for you.” She frowns and rolls her head back towards him, as if it’s too heavy to lift. “Why wouldn’t I want to talk about it?” And maybe it’s just because he’s high, but he’s pretty sure her eyes can see straight through to the back of his skull.

This is the part where he should be sincere. _In vino veritas_ , but like, for weed, right? He should tell her he knows she’s lonely and feeling adrift, that he doesn’t know how to share his joy with her without hurting her. 

Because Stevie is so hungry, is the thing. David knows because they’re so alike, because you don’t turn into a cynical asshole unless you’re disappointed that your life isn’t a grand love story, that nobody wants to love your love handles and hairy belly and kiss you in the rain, that you haven’t found the map and the compass and the key to a fulfilling career. 

“I just feel like you don’t, a hundred percent, care about floral centerpieces,” he says carefully.

“We can talk about floral centerpieces,” she says. “You’re my best friend, so we can talk about flowers whenever you want to.” She looks down, her hair sweeping against her cheek, and David feels that strange deja vu again, that she reminds him of someone, he can’t think who.

“Are you sure? Because . . . you don’t have flowers. At the front desk. There’s no flowers. It might make you sad,” David says, feeling subtle.

She rolls her eyes and barks a laugh. “I would like _flowers_ , yes. But I’m glad about your flowers. I want my best friend to have all the flowers in the world.” She takes another hit and passes him the joint again.

David holds her hand, as much of a hug as she’ll tolerate right now, and wishes with everything in him that he could find a good man for Stevie, could shoot him with a tranq dart and drag him back to her, hand him over with a bow on his head like that guy at the end of _National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation_. Fuck, he’s high. 

“Just so we’re clear, you know we’re not talking about flowers,” he says.

“Yeah, I kind of picked up on that part,” she says.

“So you’re not . . . upset? Like, you know you’re still my person, right?”

“Pretty sure Patrick is your person now. Like, it’s disgusting how much he’s your person.”

He turns to face her fully, fighting to draw the words from his woolly brain. “Patrick is my person, and you’re my person too. Only difference is, Patrick and I fuck.”

Her eyes shine like black pearls, and David thinks it’s 90% the joy of trolling, but 10% . . . something else. She snorts and shimmies suggestively against his arm. “Nuh-uh, you guys don’t fuck; you make loooooooove.” Which, incorrect, since their top-floor neighbor Mrs. Kubiak has filed not one but four noise complaints against them in the past few months. 

But he gets what Stevie means, that she’s reinforcing a line between what he does with Patrick and what he had done with her. The sex with her had been great, but that’s all it ever was for him, and she had always looked away when she came. He remembers offering her her own bedroom in New York and hates himself a little.

“I changed my mind, I hate you,” David says, facing forward again.

“No you don’t,” she says, putting her head back on his shoulder like it belongs there, and David loves that it does.

“No, I don’t,” David says, and finds her hand again. She interlaces their fingers together, which feels a little weird around his engagement rings, and there’s probably some symbolism in there he could figure out if he weren’t so stoned.

“But just for the record, I’m not jealous,” Stevie says. 

“Not even a little bit?” David can’t help but ask.

“No,” she says, with a derisive snort that falls just short of convincing. “You two are so gross. Literally everyone in town has walked in on you sucking face in your store. Shoot me if I ever get that sappy.” She looks down and fiddles with his rings.

“I want you to have a store,” David says, his foggy brain feeling like it’s stumbling toward some profound metaphor.

“I don’t really want a store,” says Stevie blankly. “I’m not even sure I want a motel.”

“I mean a metaphorical store.”

“What the fuck is a metaphorical store?”

“I mean, I want you to have the place, the work, the _thing_ you always wanted to do, and . . . someone to suck face with. I want you to annoy the shit out of me, sucking face with him,” David says, waving the joint. Then, softer: “I want you to _win_.”

She folds her lips over something that might be a smile, and closes her eyes for a few seconds. “I’ll be sucking face at the metaphorical store, I assume?”

“Yes, obviously,” says David. 

She’s silent an eternal minute, then tucks her chin to her chest. Her hair swings forward and for the first time that evening, he can’t see her face.

“I . . . would like that,” she says quietly. “But you can still talk about your flowers, because I want that too.”

“Okay,” he says, and presses a kiss to the crown of her head, right where the streetlight makes a white halo around the top.

And suddenly he knows who she reminds him of tonight.

David hadn’t thought about religion much as a kid, but when his dad started making noise about a bar mitzvah, his mother had come down with an acute case of Catholic guilt and had declared it was important that David be exposed to both of his parents’ faiths.

She had dragged David to mass at a nearby cathedral the next weekend and given him a crash course in Catholicism. He’d found the whole thing weird and overwhelming, but he loved the little Virgin Mary prayer card that his mother had grabbed for him off the pamphlet table. Mary had looked so lovely and mysterious and sad, her eyes cast down like she didn’t want people looking at her. 

Stevie looks a lot like that card, with her melancholy eyes and long hair, and he loves her so much, loves her heart, bare as it is before him with its band of thorns. He pictures Stevie on a prayer card, wants it to say _Lady Peaceful_ or _Lady Happy_ at the top.

A sudden beam of light drags across their faces, and it’s Patrick, finally home. He ambles up to them with his hands jammed into his pockets, face bright with amusement.

“Having fun without me?” He still has the eyeliner on, and David feels another bolt of desire shiver right down his spine.

“Oh, you know, talking about the important things in life,” says Stevie breezily, as if David had imagined the shadows on her face before.

“Oh?” 

“Yup, like my tragically impending spinsterhood,” Stevie says, just a hair too flippantly.

“Okay, what the fuck, _spinsterhood_? Are you Miss Havisham now or something?” David says.

Patrick looks searchingly at Stevie and David loves that he knows what to look for. Patrick and Stevie had bonded at first over their mutual love of trolling David, but over the past two years they’ve become really close. David knows Patrick thinks of her as the sister he never had and his wiseass comrade-in-arms in the lifelong mission of Messing With David. 

There’s room on David’s right, so he should be surprised but isn’t when Patrick sits next to Stevie instead, putting her in the middle. He lays his right arm across the back of the bench and plucks the joint from her with his left.

“I knew you only loved me for my weed,” says Stevie as Patrick takes a deep drag, because she always turns the thing she’s most afraid of into a joke. David’s familiar with the impulse.

“Oh, the weed is just a bonus,” Patrick says easily, passing the joint back. He lightly pinches her earlobe and then lays his hand on David’s shoulder, thumb sweeping slowly back and forth.

Stevie yawns, closes her eyes and leans against Patrick, and all David can feel is sheer, stupid happiness, thinking about how much he loves them, how much they love each other.

David’s left hand is holding Stevie’s, so he reaches up with his right hand to squeeze Patrick’s fingers. He tips his head back and has to close his eyes, because his heart is so full, it’s so fucking full and there’s no place for it to _go_ and he might, literally, just combust with it. Because his heart has thorns too, but it also has flames. 

He had asked his mother why Mary’s heart had fire around it, on the card, and she’d said—so automatically that he knew it had been drilled into her—that it symbolized the transformative power of love. David takes another drag and his heart turns from flames to a stage light, washing over every beloved inch of Patrick and Stevie.

He thinks of his family back at the motel, and fuck, he’s way too high, suddenly his weird heart light shoots beams over there too. He pictures his dad doing the crossword in his silly nightshirt; his mom sitting at her vanity, tending to her wig and waving her hairbrush to emphasize a point; Alexis curled up on her bed and researching beaches in the Galapagos—all three of them incandescent in David’s inner eye.

Then more beams come shooting out, lighting up their store, Twyla and the cafe, the town hall, Ray and his house, til his heart is a disco ball illuminating the whole town and everyone in it, this place and these people that gave him everything he never dreamed of and always wanted. 

Patrick’s thumb brushes under David’s left eye, and he realizes tears are sliding down his cheeks. He opens his eyes and Stevie is still leaning her head against Patrick, half-asleep in the bathwater-warm night.

For a moment he wants them both so much he can barely breathe, but he knows the feeling for what it is. Weed always makes him want like this, overwhelmed and greedy for touch. He’ll always think Stevie is beautiful, but there’s no urgency in it, not like there is with Patrick. She’s just beautiful, and he loves her, and if sometimes he remembers the way she once arched against him, it’s a fleeting thought.

He’s startled out of his haze by the front door opening. It’s Mrs. Kubiak, taking her little yap dog out to pee. She narrows her eyes at the three of them, sitting on the bench in a fug of smoke, and David can all but see her mentally composing her next complaint to the landlord.

Patrick, who’s only a little buzzed, takes that as their cue. He stubs out the spent joint, then helps David get Stevie vertical. 

“Come on, let’s get you to the couch,” Patrick says as they stumble inside. Stevie is almost too high and too tired to stand so they take the elevator.

“The couch sounds pretty good right now,” she admits, listing a little as they wait for the elevator. 

“You’re welcome to sleep there whenever you want,” Patrick says, touching the small of her back as they crowd into the elevator. “Our home is your home.”

The elevator creaks to life, and Stevie winds her arms around David’s neck and leans into him. He kisses her hair again and hums, wrapping her in his arms and swaying with her. Patrick comes up behind her and puts his arms around both of them, and they rock quietly together for a moment while the elevator climbs.

Patrick rests his chin on top of Stevie’s head and smiles sweetly at David, and Christ, David could marry this man _today_.

The elevator rumbles to a halt, and they make their way into the apartment and awkwardly waltz around the kitchen table to the sofa.

“Paint me like one of your French girls,” Stevie murmurs, snickering faintly as she stretches out.

David snags a throw pillow from the chair and she raises her head just enough to get it under her while Patrick kneels down to take her shoes off.

Eyes closed, Stevie unselfconsciously wriggles out of her jeans, and her yellow boyshort underwear has little cherries all over. David has seen that underwear before, remembers sliding his hand down the front of it to cup her whole damp sex in his palm. 

Patrick looks away, blushing, pulls his mother’s hand-crocheted afghan down over her. David sits on the low arm of the couch next to her head and arranges the blanket around her shoulders, strokes her long, silky hair; looks at her dark eyelashes, feathering out over her flushed cheeks, and her wide, expressive mouth as her breaths even out.

“I love you,” he says, because they don’t ever say it, and it feels important for her to know it.

“I love you too,” she mumbles. “Don’t make it weird.”

David huffs a laugh, makes to move his hand away because it’s creepy to pet someone’s hair while they’re asleep. But her hand comes up and bats weakly at his wrist. “S’okay, you can,” she whispers, so he does for a few more moments while Patrick takes a quick shower and gets ready for bed.

After Patrick gets out of the bathroom, David takes his turn, relieving himself and brushing the skunky taste out of his mouth. He skips his skincare routine because now he’s thinking about Patrick in his eyeliner, Patrick kneeling to take Stevie’s shoes off with his large, capable hands, fuck, Patrick _kneeling_ , and his body prickles with awareness. He wishes Patrick could fuck him right now, because he loves bottoming when he’s high, but Patrick’s tired and they need to be quiet. 

David slides under the covers and rolls toward Patrick, his half-hard cock nudging a question into Patrick’s thigh. Patrick closes the gap between their bodies and kisses David, lips soft and lush as smoke as his hands skim up David’s sides under his shirt. They kiss lazily for what feels like hours as the room spins around them, the only sound the humid drag of their lips and ragged breaths, David’s sharp inhale when Patrick’s hand finds his cock.

They tug their sleep pants down to their thighs and thrust slowly against each other, Patrick holding their dicks loosely together in his slicked-up hand. David’s hand smooths over Patrick’s ass and then he gently squeezes, wanting Patrick to feel the cool press of his engagement rings.

They rock together languidly for a while until David feels his orgasm mounting. He buries his face in Patrick’s neck, surrounded completely in the clean tang of his hot skin, and feels himself unraveling.

Patrick pulls away from David, just long enough to yank off his t-shirt and stuff it down between them, wadded up over their cocks to catch their release. David catches Patrick’s hand, sucks on his fingers for a moment, and Patrick drags in a desperate breath before snaking his hand back under the duvet. 

When David comes it’s more of an exhale than a climax, and then he pushes Patrick’s hand away and strokes him for a few more minutes, in no particular hurry, just enjoying the weight and heat in his hand and the feel of his rings against Patrick’s cock, Patrick’s shaky breath buried in David’s chest when he comes. 

Patrick throws his shirt at the hamper and they pull their pants back up. David rolls over and Patrick molds himself to his back, pushing a hand under David’s shirt to rest on his belly.

David listens to Stevie’s almost-snores on the couch, feels Patrick’s hand sleepily carding through the hair on his stomach, and a wave of something warm and aching washes over him, carrying him off into dreams where his heart is a lighthouse, a torch, a blaze that fills every corner of the room with everything he never thought he could have.

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, David is right about the hot dogs. Fight me.
> 
> Also, credit where it's due: the quote about how acting is just standing up naked and turning around slowly comes from Rosalind Russell.


End file.
